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Minced Veal

A dish of small pieces of veal simmered in a seasoned gravy, served with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings of the meat in 1½ pints of water for 2 hours to make gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then remove the fat.

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the white veal into small pieces, trimming away gristle and blown edges.

  2. Season the veal with coarse sea salt, white pepper, nutmeg or mace, and lemon zest.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix 1½ teaspoons of flour with a small slice of butter to thicken the gravy.

  2. Combine the veal with the gravy and heat gently without boiling.

  3. Serve with pale‑toasted sippets and add cream if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White veal
Provides the tender meat that forms the body of the dish.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory flavor that binds the minced veal together.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the veal rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Combine the veal with the gravy and heat gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat and can cause the thickened gravy to break or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the veal tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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